[Ninong]

Rush was trying to defend Laura Bush's off-color jokes when one of his callers brought up an anti-Laura letter published in the New York Times.

Rush: Yes, Jane Smiley, Carmel Valley, California. Let me read that letter again.

Caller: Yes.

Rush: I've had some emails about this. Here's the email: "If the Bushes are not yahoo or religious zealots then their use of religious zealotry to consolidate power is all the more cynical and shameless. Laura Bush may think she's only being funny but some of us think she's being a hypocrite and even further exposing the true agenda of the Bush administration which is to do harm and apparently enjoy it." -- Jane Smiley, Carmel Valley, California.

Caller: Yes, it occurred to me whether this might be the same Jane Smiley who writes for Slate Magazine.

Rush: Yeah, a lot of people have asked that. Jane Smiley is a writer for Slate. She wrote one of the postelection pieces last November. So it's a good question. It wouldn't surprise me if it's the same Jane Smiley that writes for Slate and has dreams of writing for the New York Times and hasn't been able to crack anything but the letters section yet. Keep working, Jane. Carmel Valley, California, you know, it's not cheap to live in Carmel Valley, California.


Geez, Rush, didn't they have a library at the detox center or were you too doped up to notice?

I think Dr. Smiley can afford to live quite well in Carmel Valley or any place else for that matter considering that she has published ten novels and is one of America's top writers. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001, but I'm sure she has always dreamed of having one of her letters to the editor read on-air by the great windbag himself. Her life is now complete.